The Walking dead : no sanctuary - Questions on rules

Hi,

I’m looking forward for some precisions on the rules (if any body has the answers i’ll be grateful) :

- first, i am wondering if the «*1 action and 1 manœuver*» is mandatory or not? The rules use the «*may*» and not «*must*» but there has been a debate on that on BGG. So an official answers could be useful. And, If it is not mandatory, if I do an action (or a manœuver) must i do the other part, for instance here the manœuver ?

- if I choose a card or an action like handgun training (rick) : can I use the 2sd part of the card (defeat 1 enemy) if I don’t use the main part of the card (you may raise Threat....) ?

- if I choose a card or an action like Protector (Rick) : can I use the 2sd part of the main action (a survivor in your space...) and not the first part (defeat 1 enemy...) ?

- if I have an active Event like Slow them down! : must I place the barricade to have the bonus OR can I just do the action with no effect (exemple : I have no more place to place a barricade) to have the bonus.

- if my ally roll 3 Fear in one roll. Must I consider this roll like one global exert 3, and then like an exert X = exert 1, or must I consider the 3 Fear individually ?

- must I roll the dice for the action before resolving the effect of the top action, or after ? Exemple : I do a search action, I do the top action, search a card, I found a walker. Do I have a black die for him, or must I keep the die pool of the beginning of the action.

- first, i am wondering if the «*1 action and 1 manœuver*» is mandatory or not? The rules use the «*may*» and not «*must*» but there has been a debate on that on BGG. So an official answers could be useful. And, If it is not mandatory, if I do an action (or a manœuver) must i do the other part, for instance here the manœuver ?

During the Action Step of a Survivor’s activation, that Survivor can perform up to one Action and up to one Maneuver, in whichever order they choose. So, if you want to do neither for whatever reason, that's just fine. If you want to do just one or the other, that's fine too. And of course, doing both is always an option as well.

- if I choose a card or an action like handgun training (rick) : can I use the 2sd part of the card (defeat 1 enemy) if I don’t use the main part of the card (you may raise Threat....) ?

Short Answer: If I'm understanding your question correctly, yes.

Long Answer: This is going to get a little technical, but I believe it should help to make things as clear as possible. Fair warning, though, this may be text-heavy.

Let's say you're playing as Rick, and you choose Handgun Training as the card you play for your turn. During the Action Step, you can choose to perform up to one action. Your options for that action would include any of the Standard Actions (Grapple, Search, and Assist) as well as the Special Action granted by Handgun Training, Aim for the Head. Note that some Scenarios or other game effects might give you other actions to choose from, but we don't have to worry about that for now.

Now, suppose you choose to perform the Aim for the Head action. To start, you perform the action effect (in the white box), which in this case says "You may raise Threat by 1 to defeat 1 enemy within range 2." Since this is a "may" ability, if you don't want to raise threat to defeat an enemy, that's a perfectly valid choice for this part of the action.

After performing the action effect, you would then roll action dice (and threat dice, if applicable). For each Success result you get (including those from Focus/Exert results you choose to convert into Success results), you choose to perform one of the Success Effects of the Aim for the Head action. You can do this even if you declined to raise threat and defeat an enemy during Aim for the Head's action effect, since you still chose to perform Aim for the Head as your action for the turn.

Now, an important note is that if you had played the Handgun Training card, but chose to perform an action other than Aim for the Head, you would not be able to choose from among the Success Effects listed for Aim for the Head. You would instead choose from those listed for whatever action you chose to perform.

- if I choose a card or an action like Protector (Rick) : can I use the 2sd part of the main action (a survivor in your space...) and not the first part (defeat 1 enemy...) ?

It depends. If you see an effect written as "[Do A] and [Do B]," you will always try to do as much as possible. So, if you choose to perform the Covering Fire action on Protector, which has the action effect of "[Defeat 1 enemy within range 1] and [a Survivor in your Space may move 1 Space]," if there is no enemy within range 1, you would still choose a Survivor in your space to optionally move 1 Space. If there is an enemy within range 1, though, if you would need to defeat it if when performing Covering Fire's action effect.

Note that other cards follow the format of "[Do A] to [Do B]." In those cases, you would not be able to "Do B" unless you "Do A."

- if I have an active Event like Slow them down! : must I place the barricade to have the bonus OR can I just do the action with no effect (exemple : I have no more place to place a barricade) to have the bonus.

For Slow Them Down! you must either place a Barricade or defeat a Walker to be eligible to gain 1 Trust and place your Survivor Token on the Event Card.

- if my ally roll 3 Fear in one roll. Must I consider this roll like one global exert 3, and then like an exert X = exert 1, or must I consider the 3 Fear individually ?

Each Fear Result is processed individually. If you have an Ally who's Fear Effect is to exert, 3 Fear Results would cause three separate instances of Exertion, which will each cause the Ally to gain an Exert token.

- must I roll the dice for the action before resolving the effect of the top action, or after ? Exemple : I do a search action, I do the top action, search a card, I found a walker. Do I have a black die for him, or must I keep the die pool of the beginning of the action.

When performing an action, the action effect is fully resolved before you form your action pool to roll. Therefore, if that action effect causes you to suffer stress or, as in the example above, causes a walker to spawn in your space, you will need to add the Stress Dice from those to your Action Pool when rolling. Similarly, if the action effect causes you to discard Stress, you will not need to add Stress Dice from that discarded Stress when creating your Action Pool to roll for that action.

I hope all that helped to clear things up. Please enjoy your time playing.

Can I ask if this is 'official' from the Sadler brothers (assuming you're not one of them!) or from the development team? Just want to make sure whether this is an official change/clarification since it could change the difficulty of the game (in that you're not rolling action dice every turn, even if stressed, as you could choose to avoid taking an action with a character who is heavily stressed).

Can I ask if this is 'official' from the Sadler brothers (assuming you're not one of them!) or from the development team? Just want to make sure whether this is an official change/clarification since it could change the difficulty of the game (in that you're not rolling action dice every turn, even if stressed, as you could choose to avoid taking an action with a character who is heavily stressed).

-K

Hi there, kbernatz. Welcome to the forums. I'm not one of the Sadlers, but I am an employee here at Cryptozoic, and I did do some work on No Sanctuary. So, you should be able to consider this an official source. Admittedly, it's been roughly a year or two since I was playing regularly, so my memory might be a bit fuzzy in a few spots. Specifically, my memory of the Ally rules are a little spotty, since I didn't get to spend as much time playing with them. Still, reading through the rules again seems to be doing a fine job of jogging my memory for the most part, especially when it comes to the more straightforward questions. Speaking of which...

Originally Posted by Grenko

An other (last ?) question :

I’m playing solo. So I have a survivor and 4 allies. Does the playing order of the allies must always be the same, or can I choose they’re activation order each round ?

Thanx again

The Allies should be activated in a fixed order. Also, just to be sure, normally you should have four Survivors total, your own and 3 Allies. There are a handful of scenarios that use different Survivor counts, but four is the default.

Agreed...thanks. It is nice to have an 'official source' to be able to confirm answers. One of the Sadler brothers posted on BGG that they won't really be fielding answers in an official capacity, but are passing that off to Cryptozoic, so this at least gives the players a reasonable place to look.

Do you know if there is going to be a specific person who will field questions on TWD:NS (you?) or if a FAQ would be maintained? I've not dealt with Cryptozoic before, so not sure what your general policy/procedure is (I develop for GMT Games and Compass Games, so am used to maintaining FAQ, errata files, etc., but it seems that every company does things differently!).

Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to support the game....we definitely appreciate it!

Agreed...thanks. It is nice to have an 'official source' to be able to confirm answers. One of the Sadler brothers posted on BGG that they won't really be fielding answers in an official capacity, but are passing that off to Cryptozoic, so this at least gives the players a reasonable place to look.

Do you know if there is going to be a specific person who will field questions on TWD:NS (you?) or if a FAQ would be maintained? I've not dealt with Cryptozoic before, so not sure what your general policy/procedure is (I develop for GMT Games and Compass Games, so am used to maintaining FAQ, errata files, etc., but it seems that every company does things differently!).

Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to support the game....we definitely appreciate it!

-K

Yeah, I heard Brady was fielding some questions there on BGG, which was amazing to see. That kind of dedication to the players is yet another thing to add to the long list of why working with the Sadler's has been such a treat. Still, we'd hate for the players to come to expect that, or even start taking it for granted, since the Sadler's are likely plenty busy as it is with other projects, and they shouldn't feel obligated to spend even more of their time attending to forum questions. Like I said before, though, the fact that they had been doing so up until now just goes to show how awesome they are.

As for who taking questions, we have a number of people answering questions here, so thankfully it's not just a one-person operation. I just happened to have covered the ones that came in on this forum so far, but we also have folks answering questions that come in through other various channels (Kickstarter, Facebook, email, etc). As for an FAQ, I don't believe one is planned at this time.

And if I may say so, thank you for taking the time to play the game. We definitely appreciate that as well!